


You Is a Dad

by SpaceVinci



Series: Sanders Sides [2]
Category: Sanders Sides, Thomas Sanders, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Family, Father-son dynamic, Gen, I just have a lot of emotions over their relationship okay???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 15:57:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11993061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceVinci/pseuds/SpaceVinci
Summary: Virgil does not have parents. He also does not have a problem with this fact. He doesn't. He doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't.(He does.)





	1. Sonny Boy

The Sides don’t have parents.

This isn’t sad. It’s fact. They weren’t born any more than ideas are born; which is to say, they were, in a sense, but “conception” takes on a far less biological meaning. It’s difficult to credit an idea’s birth to any one person or group. Could you consider Thomas their father when they came to exist as facets of his personality due to outside circumstances? When the basic idea of their existence is arguably as old as humanity itself? Hardly.

So they don’t have parents and it isn’t sad. It really isn’t. Which doesn’t explain at all why it bothered Virgil for so long.

He doesn’t have parents and he doesn’t want parents. Or, at least, that’s what he’d tell anyone who cared to ask, not that anyone ever did. Parents tell you what to do, stick you with labels and expectations and disapproving looks when you fall short. You get that from society as a whole enough as it is. Virgil doesn’t want parents to misunderstand him and tell him what to be and what to think, to hold his hand every step of the way like he’s a baby, or even to back off and “be there just in case,” which is bull because you can feel them breathing down your neck even when they say they aren’t, that’s just how parents _work_. You want to impress them, or at least satisfy them, you want to prove yourself worthy of love and support and praise, and that’s the last thing Virgil needs.

He doesn’t want _parents_ , he’d tell the zero people that want to know, not when it means all that. Objectively, he is perfectly fine not having parents, thank you very much, and isn’t he just the prime example of objective reasoning? So, since _logically_ he doesn’t want parents, obviously, _logically_ , it doesn’t upset him that he doesn’t have any.

This is one of the better articulated lies he likes to tell himself.

Because the truth is, it bothers him a lot, and he doesn’t know why because he hasn’t let himself think about it long enough to figure it out. Good at overthinking as he is, he’s managed to avoid dwelling on that particular problem for any extended amount of time on most accounts. And when he can’t? Well, sometimes Thomas gets a random urge to call his parents and check in on them. And maybe that’s not always Patton’s doing. These things happen.

For the longest time, Virgil figured he was the only one who got hung up on stupid things like this. It would make sense. He’s the anxious Side, the one that can make a mountain range out of a piece of dirt a mole brushed off its back. He’s got to be the only one who feels an ache at the mention of parents like he’s missing something he never had, because that’s exactly it, he never had it. He doesn’t have parents and he doesn’t need parents and he shouldn’t _want_ parents, and there’s nothing he can do about any of it. He can only sulk and pretend and be secure in the knowledge that he’s the only one who gets upset about this crap sometimes.

Right?

He’d expect Logan to prove him wrong on absolutely any topic except this one. He’d figured, absently, that if he ever brought any of this up with Logan he’d get nothing but a vocalization of all the logic he’s already cooked up himself. What he doesn’t expect, what he never saw coming, is his childish and uncalled for comment mid-debate about hypothetical mothers to get so very under Logan’s skin.

“Let’s leave the mother’s out of this, alright?” Thomas requests, and then thinks to add, “Especially considering the fact that neither of you _have a mother_ ,” like they don’t already know that.

“If she did exist she’d be preposterous and pointless,” Virgil says, unwilling to give up the immature comebacks so easily.

The way Logan screeches back “FALSEHOOD!”, the way is echoes around the room before Logan regains his calm, it sticks with Virgil in a way he won’t examine until after the debate is long done. Because as much as he tries to tell himself otherwise, as much as he tries not to “jump to conclusions” or whatever, one thought has lodged itself in his head and won’t leave no matter how hard he tries: it bothers Logan, at least a little, that he doesn’t have a mother.

He elects to do nothing whatsoever with this information. He doesn’t want or need a heart-to-heart with Logan, and it won’t help the situation; they still don’t have parents, and they’re still going to have to suck it up and deal.

His plan of ignoring the Parent Problem is going marvelously (or, well, as marvelously as it ever goes) right up until his decision to duck out. More specifically, right up until everyone actually goes looking for him. More specifically, right up until he calls Patton a funny guy and Patton looks around with pride and says, “I love my dark strange son.”

That comment gets stuck in his head like a children’s game, a talking toy so old that it only says one thing, and some kid got their hands on it and won’t stop pressing the buttons. Over and over and over again until he can’t do anything but crank the music up to eleven and try to drown it out. “My dark strange son.” His son. His _son_. And then there’s the card, the “UR FAM ILY” crap that he’s got hanging on his wall now in a place he hopes none of the other Sides ever think to look. That gives the metaphorical toy another noise to play ad infinitum.

_Son. Fam. Son. Fam. Son. Fam. Son. Fam. ILY._


	2. Chapter 2

Father’s Day was a month ago. Virgil learns that you can still find cards pretty easily. He also learns that all of the cards are either horrible and cheesy or reference some sort of stereotypical father-son bonding experience or both at once. This only clinches his certainty that this is a Stupid Idea that’s gonna make him look ridiculous and sappy and awful and it’s gonna make everything weird and uncomfortable and he should stop even considering this, what is he  _ doing _ .

He settles on a simple card. Two colors, two sentences. No cartoons, no puns, no heartfelt mushiness. Then he stares at it for a good fifteen minutes before writing “thanks” and signing it and calling it good enough.

He wants, really desperately wants, to leave the card somewhere Patton will find it so he can drop it off and retreat back to his room to pretend he isn’t having a crap-ton of internal conflict right now. But he can’t think of a good way to do it without running the risking of someone else finding it first. So, steeling himself for the most awkward and painful exchange he’s had in, oh, probably ever, Virgil stands in front of Patton’s door and knocks.

“Virgil?” Patton answers the door in his cat onesie, which isn’t surprising given the time of day and also who he is as a person. “Hey, what’s up, kiddo? You wanna come in?”

Virgil considers it. He really does. But he’s almost positive that stepping foot in Patton’s room is only going to heighten any emotions he’s already feeling, and he  _ will  _ start crying if he lets that happen.

“I just - I wanted to give you this,” he says, thrusting the card at Patton. Something keeps him rooted to the spot, stops him from turning of his heel and running away the second Patton has a hold of the card. (Some internal need to impress, or to satisfy, or to prove himself worthy of love and support and praise, maybe, but best not to think too hard about that.)

“What is a dad?” Patton reads aloud quietly to himself. He flips the card open. “You. You is a dad.”

It’s a ridiculous card, and the only reason Virgil thought it was funny is probably because Tumblr has irreparably messed up his sense of humor, and it 100% does not warrant the beaming smile that Patton trains on him the second he’s done processing.

“Oh, Virgil!” Patton cries, and the next thing Virgil knows, he’s being pulled into a warm hug that’s doing its best to push his emotions over the edge in all the ways he was trying to avoid. He can feel that hot pressure building up behind his eyes, same as it always does when he’s sad or angry, but he’s neither of those things right now, he’s just… he’s feeling something, and he’s feeling a lot of it.

“Yeah, well,” Virgil manages. “Happy late Father’s Day.”

If he starts crying a little when he finally gives up and reciprocates the hug, well, Patton doesn’t mention it.

He’s a good dad like that.


End file.
